Off to the races

 On a glorious evening, I went to a meet arranged by the Legends Driving Club at Lingfield racecourse, which is only 30 minutes from me.

Some lovely cars in a beautiful setting:

...and some corkers of Barry:

A fun evening...

The Sun is On

 Yes, the weather continues to be a little chilly but sunny and dry - perfect convertible weather.

I went on another run with the devilish Tribal Gruppe, starting at the same place but visiting a nice coffee place (Deveroast) in Botley:

After that, we took another run to a burger van in a layby on a hill overlooking Portsmouth - a great car place with lots of yoofs and their modded beemers plus a load of bikes.

There were at least 15 cars, with some real interesting people; the 911 GTS on the left in the pic above was owned by a friendly chap who had his son with him. He is obviously VERY loaded as he is paying for his son to race BMW M4s in some series or other. The 997 parked to the right of me was bought for only £18k at auction (normal price is nearer £30k) - it had a new engine 20k miles ago and has only done 66k miles in total so no idea why it was so cheap. The owner didn't know either - he had gone to the auction to bid on an E-Type! :-) 

A fun drive home topped off a 150-mile day.

I realise that the organiser of these runs is not a popular guy in the community BUT he is still the only one doing these sort of runs ie. quick meet, mad dash to the next place, another coffee, another mad dash and home. So I may do more, as long as he keeps the cost to the £4 I paid for this one.

Mid-week, I popped out to Torque Cafe for lunch - a beautiful day and a glorious cruise in the sun:

My son is still waiting for the insurance to decide on his car and he is getting very panicky that they may try to refuse his claim because of undeclared mods. He's hoping they won't look too closely at his car - it will be a good test to see how stringent they are. If you listened to social media (always a bad idea), they will refuse you for adding an air freshener and my son has done much more.

Disaster strikes

 It was all going so well last week - went on a nice evening drive in the sunset:

But it's all gone to pot...the cause? My son (kids, hey, who'd have 'em?). On a late night drive, he crashed his beloved BMW M4 😞

Thankfully, he is fine but the car is most likely to be a write-off and he will never get back the many £1000s he has spent on upgrades and mods. He had just bought some new, cheap rear tyres (he wears through them so quickly, he doesn't buy decent ones) and they certainly contributed to him losing control on a fast corner and spinning into a hedgerow. However, he does drive like a nutcase and there is no question that is really the main cause (which he admits).

The car actually doesn't look too bad; lots of front body panels damaged, a couple of very mangled wheels and missing trim. However, there will almost certainly be some suspension damage, a definite radiator leak and the side airbags all deployed (but not the steering wheel/dashboard, weirdly). Very unlikely that is economically repairable...

Selfishly, this probably means my euro trip in late June will be off; I need to confirm and pay for hotels in May and it is unlikely that the insurance will be resolved by then or even if my son would like to go on a trip in whatever he gets next. He won't be able to afford anything decent and he may not want to take a lesser car on a road trip. I'll consider going alone but it would save money and work holiday days if I just cancel.

Depressing times...

Hotting up

 The weather is starting to warm up and I've had a few daytime runs at lunchtime with the roof down - nothing too exciting but fun nonetheless. 

Today was a longer run out to the wilds of Kent. I normally go south of home but today was east and it was very good; traffic seems a bit quieter and some really good roads out that way. I ended up at Hawkhurst fisheries which has a nice cafe and great lake views:

All by my lonesome as my son went to Wimbledon for the Southside Hustle we went to a few weeks ago (I didn't fancy going again so soon) and I didn't even bother asking the Porkers group.

My son has just had both turbos replaced (and upgraded) on his M4 under warranty and spent another £x000 on various other bits for his car; it's now up to 650 bhp!